Gravity, a Geometrical Course presents general relativity (GR) in a systematic and exhaustive way, covering three aspects that are homogenized into a single texture: i) the mathematical, geometrical foundations, exposed in a self consistent contemporary formalism, ii) the main physical, astrophysical and cosmological applications, updated to the issues of contemporary research and observations, with glimpses on supergravity and superstring theory, iii) the historical development of scientific ideas underlying both the birth of general relativity and its subsequent evolution. The book is divided in two volumes.

Volume Two is covers black holes, cosmology and an introduction to supergravity. The aim of this volume is two-fold. It completes the presentation of GR and it introduces the reader to theory of gravitation beyond GR, which is supergravity. Starting with a short history of the black hole concept, the book covers the Kruskal extension of the Schwarzschild metric, the causal structures of Lorentzian manifolds, Penrose diagrams and a detailed analysis of the Kerr-Newman metric. An extensive historical account of the development of modern cosmology is followed by a detailed presentation of its mathematical structure, including non-isotropic cosmologies and billiards, de Sitter space and inflationary scenarios, perturbation theory and anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The last three chapters deal with the mathematical and conceptual foundations of supergravity in the frame of free differential algebras. Branes are presented both as classical solutions of the bulk theory and as world-volume gauge theories with particular emphasis on the geometrical interpretation of kappa-supersymmetry. The rich bestiary of special geometries underlying supergravity lagrangians is presented, followed by a chapter providing glances on the equally rich collection of special solutions of supergravity.

Pietro Fre is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Torino, Italy and is currently serving as Scientific Counsellor of the Italian Embassy in Moscow. His scientific passion lies in supergravity and all allied topics, since the inception of the field, in 1976. He was professor at SISSA, worked in the USA and at CERN. He has taught General Relativity for 15 years. He has previously two scientific monographs, Supergravity and Superstrings and The N=2 Wonderland, He is also the author of a popular science book on cosmology and two novels, in Italian."

reprinted in the British trade journal Physics World in 1990, three separate and 5 lengthy replies from establishment physicists were printed in subsequent issues. For outsiders, especially scientists who rely on physicist's theories in their own fields, this situation is disquieting. Moreover, many recall their introduction to quantum mechanics as a startling, if not shocking, experience. A molecular biologist related how he had started in theoretical physics but, after hearing the ideology of quantum mechanics, marched straight to the Reg istrar's office and switched fields. A colleague recalled how her undergraduate chemistry professor religiously entertained queries from the class - until one day he began with the words: "No questions will be permitted on today's lecture." The topic, of course, was quantum mechanics. My father, an organic chemist at a Midwestern university, also had to give that dreaded annual lecture. Around age 16, I picked up a little book he used to prepare and was perplexed by the author's tone, which seemed apologetic to the point of pleading. It was my first brush with the quantum theory. 6 Eventually, I went to graduate school in physics. By then I had acquired an historical bent, which developed out of an episode in my freshman year in college. To relieve the tedium of the introductory physics course, I set out to understand Einstein's theory of relativity (the so-called Special Theory of 1905, not the later and more difficult General Theory of 1915). This went badly at first."

Written by literary scholars, historians of science, and cultural historians, the twenty-two original essays in this collection explore the intriguing and multifaceted interrelationships between science and culture through the periodical press in nineteenth-century Britain. Ranging across the spectrum of periodical titles, the six sections comprise: 'Women, Children, and Gender', 'Religious Audiences', 'Naturalizing the Supernatural', 'Contesting New Technologies', 'Professionalization and Journalism', and 'Evolution, Psychology, and Culture'. The essays offer some of the first 'samplings and soundings' from the emergent and richly interdisciplinary field of scholarship on the relations between science and the nineteenth-century media.

In 1919 the Prussian Ministry of Science, Arts and Culture opened a dossier on "Einstein's Theory of Relativity." It was rediscovered by the author in 1961 and is used in conjunction with numerous other subsequently identified 'Einstein' files as the basis of this fascinating book. In particular, the author carefully scrutinizes Einstein's FBI file from 1950-55 against mostly unpublished material from European including Soviet sources and presents hitherto unknown documentation on Einstein's alleged contacts with the German Communist Party and the Comintern. Siegfried Grundmann's thorough study of Einstein's participation on a committee of the League of Nations, based on archival research in Geneva, is also new.

This book outlines Einstein's image in politics and German science policy. It covers the period from his appointment as a researcher in Berlin to his fight abroad against the "boycott of German science" after World War I and his struggle at home against attacks on "Jewish physics" of which he was made a prime target. An important gap in the literature on Einstein is thus filled, contributing much new material toward a better understanding of Einstein's so rigorous break with Germany.

Selected writings of the remarkable teacher, lecturer, and scientist, Louis Agassiz, whose enthusiasm for natural history is communicated with vitality and precision. The editor's introduction and notes at the beginning of each chapter provide a cogent analysis of the contributions of the scientist-writer.

This book is intended as a historical and critical study on the origin of the equations of motion as established in Newton's Principia. The central question that it aims to answer is whether it is indeed correct to ascribe to Galileo the inertia principle and the law of falling bodies. In order to accomplish this task, the study begins by considering theories on the motion of bodies from classical antiquity, and especially those of Aristotle. The theories developed during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are then reviewed, with careful analysis of the contributions of, for example, the Merton and Parisian Schools and Galileo's immediate predecessors, Tartaglia and Benedetti. Finally, Galileo's work is examined in detail, starting from the early writings. Excerpts from individual works are presented, to allow the texts to speak for themselves, and then commented upon. The book provides historical evidence both for Galileo's dependence on his forerunners and for the major breakthroughs that he achieved. It will satisfy the curiosity of all who wish to know when and why certain laws have been credited to Galileo.

This monograph investigates the development of hydrostatics as a science. In the process, it sheds new light on the nature of science and its origins in the Scientific Revolution. Readers will come to see that the history of hydrostatics reveals subtle ways in which the science of the seventeenth century differed from previous periods. The key, the author argues, is the new insights into the concept of pressure that emerged during the Scientific Revolution. This came about due to contributions from such figures as Simon Stevin, Pascal, Boyle and Newton. The author compares their work with Galileo and Descartes, neither of whom grasped the need for a new conception of pressure. As a result, their contributions to hydrostatics were unproductive. The story ends with Newton insofar as his version of hydrostatics set the subject on its modern course. He articulated a technical notion of pressure that was up to the task. Newton compared the mathematical way in hydrostatics and the experimental way, and sided with the former. The subtleties that lie behind Newton's position throws light on the way in which developments in seventeenth-century science simultaneously involved mathematization and experimentation. This book serves as an example of the degree of conceptual change that new sciences often require. It will be of interest to those involved in the study of history and philosophy of science. It will also appeal to physicists as well as interested general readers.

We live in an age in which one can easily think that our generation has invented and discovered almost everything; but the truth is quite the opposite. Progress cannot be considered as sudden unexpected spurts of individual brains: such a genius, the inventor of everything, has never existed in the history of humanity. What did exist was a limitless procession of experiments made by men who did not waver when faced with defeat, but were inspired by the rare successes that have led to our modern comfortable reality. And that continue to do so with the same enthusiasm. The study of the History of Engineering is valuable for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it can help us to understand the genius of the scientists, engineers and craftsmen who existed centuries and millenniums before us; who solved problems using the devices of their era, making machinery and equipment whose concept is of such a surprising modernity that we must rethink our image of the past.

Jabir ibn Hayyan, for a long time the reigning alchemical authority both in Islam and the Latin West, has exercised numerous generations of scholars. To be sure, it is not only the vexed question of the historical authorship and dating of the grand corpus Jabirianum which poses a serious scholarly challenge; equally challenging is the task of unraveling all those obscure and tantalizing discourses which it contains. This book, which marks the first full-scale study of Jabir ever to be published in the English language, takes up both challenges. The author begins by critically reexamining the historical foundations of the prevalent view that the Jabirian corpus is the work not of an 8th-century individual, but that of several generations of Shi'i authors belonging to the following century and later. Tentatively concluding that this view is problematic, the author, therefore, infers that its methodological implications are also problematic. Thus, developing its own methodological matrix, the book takes up the second challenge, namely that of a substantive analysis and explication of a Jabirian discourse, the Book of Stones. Here explicating Jabir's notions of substance and qualities, analyzing his ontological theory of language and unraveling the metaphysics of his Science of Balance, the author reconstructs the doctrinal context of the Stones and expounds its central theme. He then presents an authoritative critical edition of a substantial selection of the text of the Stones, based on all available manuscripts. This critical edition has been translated in its entirety and is provided with exhaustive commentaries and textual notes -- another pioneering feature of this book: for this is the first English translation of a Jabirian text to emerge in print after a whole century. An outstanding contribution is that it announces and presents an exciting textual discovery: the author has found in the Stones a hitherto unknown Arabic translation of part of Aristotle's Categories. Given that we have so far known of only one other, and possibly later, classical Arabic translation of the Greek text, Haq's discovery gives this book an historical importance.

In this posthumous book, the late Professor R. Hooykaas (1906-1994) conveys a lifetime of historical thought about modes of scientific advance over the centuries. In what variety of ways has the human mind, with all its subjectivity and its capacity for self-deception, but also its piercing gifts of discovery, managed to come to terms with the whimsical tricks of nature'? Central to this erudite, penetrating, and widely ranging study is Hooykaas's distinction between facts (given by nature yet entirely subject to our mode of interpreting them), faith (broad conceptions like the idea of order, of simplicity, or of harmony), and fictions in the sense of those daring intellectual tools, such as theories and hypotheses and models, which reflect the scientist's creative imagination. Case studies drawn from the history of all branches of science (including chemistry and the earth sciences) and from Antiquity to the present day, serve to widen and to deepen the understanding of every reader (whether a historian of science or not) with a desire to learn more about the realities of the scientific pursuit.

Of all the Cambridge Platonists, Henry More has attracted the most scholar ly interest in recent years, as the nature and significance of his contribution to the history of thought has come to be better understood. This revival of interest is in marked contrast to the neglect of More's writings lamented even by his first biographer, Richard Ward, a regret echoed two centuries after his 1 death. Since then such attention as there has been to More has not always served him well. He has been dismissed as credulous on account of his belief in witchcraft while his reputation as the most mystical of the Cambridge 2 school has undermined his reputation as a philosopher. Much of the interest in More in the present century has tended to focus on one particular aspect of his writing. There has been considerable interest in his poems. And he has come to the attention of philosophers thanks to his having corresponded with Descartes. Latterly, however, interest in More has been rekindled by renewed interest in the intellectual history of the seventeenth century and Renaissance. And More has been studied in the context of seventeenth-cen tury science and the wider context of seventeenth-century philosophy. Since More is a figure who belongs to the Renaissance tradition of unified sapientia he is not easily compartmentalised in the categories of modern disciplines. Inevitably discussion of anyone aspect of his thought involves other aspects."

Hardbound. Foundations for the Future documents the many significant events that impacted the accounting profession during the years 1980-1995. This time period was critical for our profession. The AICPA membership doubled and the nature of services offered to clients was dramatically transformed. The profession was on the cutting edge of the tremendous changes that occurred within the American business community during this time period.This book tells the story of how the profession adapted to these changes and the challenges that accompanied them. It not only lays down the facts for future generations, but also portrays our profession as an important and exciting field in which to work.

This is the first biography in twenty years of James Clerk Maxwell, one of the greatest scientists of our time and yet a man relatively unknown to the wider public. Approaching science with a freshness unbound by convention or previous expectations, he produced some of the most original scientific thinking of the nineteenth century -- and his discoveries went on to shape the twentieth century.

In March 1979, a prototype of a Compact Disc (CD) digital audio system was publicly presented and demonstrated to an audience of about 300 journalists at Philips in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. This milestone effectively marked the beginning of the digital entertainment era. In the years to follow, the CD-audio system became an astonishing worldwide success, and was followed by successful derivatives such as CD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD, and recently Blu-ray Disc. Today, around the thirtieth anniversary of the milestone, it is taken for granted that media content is stored and distributed digitally, and the analog era seems long gone. This book retraces the origins of the CD system and the subsequent evolution of digital optical storage, with a focus on the contributions of Philips to this field. The book contains perspectives on the history and evolution of optical storage, along with reproductions of key technical contributions of Philips to the field.

It has been upon the shoulders of giants that the modern world has been forged. This accessible compendium presents an insight into the great minds responsible for the technology which has transformed our lives. Each pioneer is introduced with a brief biography, followed by a concise account of their key contributions to their discipline. The selection covers a broad spread of historical and contemporary figures from theoreticians to entrepreneurs, highlighting the richness of the field of computing. Suitable for the general reader, this concise and easy-to-read reference will be of interest to anyone curious about the inspiring men and women who have shaped the field of computer science.

Medicine Across Cultures: The History and Practice of Medicine in Non-Western Cultures consists of 19 essays dealing with the medical knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside of the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Indian, Egyptian, and Tibetan medicine, the book includes essays on comparing Chinese and western medicine and religion and medicine. The essays address the connections between medicine and culture and relate the medical practices to the cultures which produced them. Each essay is well illustrated and contains an extensive bibliography. Because the geographic range is global, the book fills a gap in both the history of medicine and in cultural studies. It should find a place on the bookshelves of advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars, as well as in libraries serving those groups.

The present volume grew out of a double session of the Boston Collo quium for the Philosophy of Science held in Boston on March 25, 1983. The papers presented there (by Biezunski, Glick, Goldberg, and Judith Goodstein ) offered both sufficient comparability to establish regulari ties in the reception of relativity and Einstein's impact in France, Spain, the United States and Italy, and sufficient contrast to suggest the salience of national inflections in the process. The interaction among the participants and the added perspectives offered by members of the audience suggested the interest of commissioning articles for a more inclusive volume which would cover as many national cases as we could muster. Only general guidelines were given to the authors: to treat the special or general theories, or both, hopefully in a multidisciplinary setting, to examine the popular reception of relativity, or Einstein's personal impact, or to survey all these topics. In a previous volume, on the 2 comparative reception of Darwinism, one of us devised a detailed set of guidelines which in general were not followed. In our opinion, the studies in this collection offer greater comparability, no doubt because relativity by its nature and its complexity offers a sharper, more easily bounded target. As in the Darwinism volume, this book concludes with an essay intended to draw together in comparative perspective some of many themes addressed by the participants."

The International Symposium on History of Machines and Mechanisms is a new initiative to promote explicitly researches and publications in the field of the History of TMM (Theory of Machines and Mechanisms). It was held at the University of Cassino, Italy, from 11 to 13 May 2000. The Symposium was devoted mainly to the technical aspects of historical developments and therefore it has been addressed mainly to the IFToMM Community. In fact, most the authors of the contributed papers are experts in TMM and related topics. This has been, indeed, a challenge: convincing technical experts to go further in-depth into the background of their topics of expertise. We have received a very positive response, as can be seen by the fact that these Proceedings contain contributions by authors from all around the world. We received about 50 papers, and after review about 40 papers were accepted for both presentation and publishing in the Proceedings. This means also that the History of TMM is of interest everywhere and, indeed, an in-depth knowledge of the past can be of great help in working on the present and in shaping the future with new ideas. I believe that a reader will take advantage of the papers in these Proceedings with further satisfaction and motivation for her or his work (historical or not). These papers cover the wide field of the History of Mechanical Engineering and particularly the History of TMM.

This volume provides an introduction to Borelli s theory on the movement of animals and describes his theory and scientific experiments relating to the natural movements of bodies in a fluid environment. It describes in great detail why and how bodies which present with different magnitudes, weights and shapes move at a greater or a smaller velocity in certain proportion in the fluid environment.

Originally published in Italian in 1667, then translated into Latin in 1686, the text of this volume has now been translated into English, making the text accessible to a wide readership.

This volume is the second of two volumes that contain the Introduction and physical-mathematical illustrations necessary to understand Giovanni Alfonso Borelli s work "On the Movement of Animals, " the founding text of seventeenth century biomechanics. The first volume, entitled "On the Force of Percussion," " "demonstrates the nature of the energy of percussion, its causes, properties and effects."

"I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years ...kneeling before you Most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals ...I abjure, curse, detest the aforesaid errors and heresies."
Galileo Galilei in Rome, 22 June 1633, before the men of the Inquisition.
In the small village of Arcetri, on a wooded hillside just south of Florence, an old man sat writing his will. He had to make a journey to Rome and wanted to be prepared for every eventuality. If the plague did not get him on the road, the strain of travelling might finish him off; in addition he had been ill most of the autumn, with dizziness, stomach pains and a serious hernia. And even if he survived these difficulties, and the cold winter wind from the Apennines did not give him pneumonia, he had no idea what awaited him in Rome, only that his arrival was unlikely to be celebrated with a special mass.

The mathematician and physicist Galileo Galilei is one of the most famous scientists of all times. The story of his life and times, of his epoch-making experiments and discoveries, of his stubbornness and pride, of his patrons in the house of Medici, of his enemies and friends in their struggle for truth - all is brought vividly to life in this book. Atle NA ss has written a gripping account of one of the great figures in European history.
He was awarded the Brage Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in Norway.

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A definitive historical study of this scientific work and the human struggles that accompanied it from the very beginning. Drawing on such materials as the resources of the Archives for the History of Quantum Physics, the Niels Bohr Archives, and the archives and scientific correspondence of the principal quantum physicists, as well as Jagdish Mehras personal discussions over many years with most of the architects of quantum theory, the authors have written a rigorous scientific history in a deeply human context. This multivolume work presents a rich account of an intellectual triumph: a unique analysis of the creative scientific process, wrapped in the story of a great human enterprise. Its lessons will be an aid to those working in the sciences and humanities alike.